For all major league starters named Francisco Liriano and not named Francisco Liriano, he only ranked 37th overall in ERA, behind Anibal Sanchez, Chad Billingsley and The Wandwagon. Liriano only won 14 games, which ranked 25th overall, tied with Jon Garland, Lackey and Brett Myers, amongst other yawnstipating names. So on first glance, you may not realize how good he was last year. He had the fifth best K/9 for major league starters last year. Above him, Lincecum, Lester, Yovani and Filthy Sanchez. Of those five, guess which one had the best xFIP at 3.06. Go ahead, I’ll wait. *taps finger, scratches head, flosses* It was Liriano! C’mon, that was a gimme. Okay, of those five, who had the best BB/9? *takes out garbage, wipes dandruff off shoulder, uses dandruff to add ambiance to fake Christmas tree* It was Liriano again! Now for the next fifteen minutes, I’m also going to throw in that Francisco Liriano was drafted on average around 200th overall. That alone makes him a keeper for 2011 fantasy baseball but let’s see what we can expect from him in 2011 fantasy baseball?

People may still be scared off of Liriano from his bout with TJ surgery, but the gender reassignment–wait, that’s Tijuana surgery. I mean, the Tommy John surgery was a success. He looked like dog’s vomit in 2009 because he wasn’t full back yet. A common issue with TJ recipients is their control is all over the place (literally!). That happened to Liriano. In 2009, he posted his worst BB/9 at 4.28. As briefly mentioned by Mr. Intro Paragraph, his BB/9 was excellent last year at 2.72. Even if he loses a bit of that control and goes closer to his career mark of 3.18, it’s still solid. The Ks are not going anywhere. The home park, Hubert H. Homerfree Retrodome, plays just as it sounds. I’ll give him a line of 16-10/3.40/1.22/200, which is conservative. Finally, it feels like Liriano has been in the game longer than Dr. Dre but he’ll still only be 27-years-old for the 2011 season. In 200 innings, you’re looking at a guy that could be in the running for the Cy Young. Assuming Murray Chass doesn’t register under multiple names and vote for Jim Bunning.

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Nice writeup. Liriano should be a sneaky pick this year. The ballpark certainly helps. So do the Royals, Indians, and Tigers lineups. One question. How in the world were Slowey and Baker so bad this year? Especially Slowey. You expect bounce back seasons for them?

isn’t Liriano a known quantity? i owned him and will own him next year in a keeper and can’t quite remember but wasn’t his spring fairly dominant? the overall numbers recessed but i’d have to imagine he is going to be a sub-100 pick next year or at least ranked that way by Yahoo and ESPN.

@Terrence Mann: Baker and Slowey are flyball pitchers and the Twins outfield logged serious innings with Delmon Young in Left and Jason Kubel in Right. Also, Baker was like herpes, you never knew when he was going to show up to pitch.

@Terrence Mann: Slowey had surgery on his wrist and I think it hurt his control which he relied heavily on. If he’s past that, then it could mean a bounce back, but there was no sign of that. Baker was bafflingly bad and I’d be nervous about giving him another shot.

@big o: Think of it as risk management. There’s a chance that Liriano’s arm falls off again, and Markakis is only 27, so he could start hitting HRs again. But yeah – as things stand now, it doesn’t look great for you.

@Tom Emanski: I think commentor #17 and #18 had some valid points. The philosophy of a player who has speed is inherently a better athletic and subsequently more valuable has its flaws too.

Tango’s brief study of the link is based upon this basic premise, “If I limit the players from my original study to those players who derive a great deal of their value from SB, CS (total SB runs of at least +20 over the preceding 4 seasons).” Players speed isn’t always translated to the base paths, or a players ability to read pitchers well doesn’t make them fast (i.e. Pujols ability to steall 10 to 15 bases doesn’t make him any faster than the years he has seven steals; look at Lance Berkman’s 2009 season as another anecdote). Another thing to note about this study was the fact that the added value of a Steal is incorporated into WAR, subsequently, the players with steal will have more value and a higher WAR, thus they start off having more value, which is why having all 5-Tool potential makes a prospect rise to the top of the rankings, a la Jay Bruce, A-Rod, etc.

If you look at Chris B. Young’s 2010 season you see a 27/28 (Hr/SB) with seven (7) times being caught stealing (80% success rate), but his Speed Score according to Fan Graphs is 4.8 during the 2010. This is because according to the formula (The Speed Score on Fan Graphs (via Bill James) formula is: Stolen Base Percentage, Frequency of Stolen Base Attempts, Percentage of Triples, and Runs Scored Percentage), he is penalized for not hitting triples or playing on a team that scores many runs. For comparisons sakes, Crawford had 110 runs and 13 triples during the 2010 season with a speed score of 8.5. Young had 94 runs and 0 triples for the aftforementioned 4.5 Speed score. Crawford had 19 more steals (47 steals with 10 CS) than Young with a 2.8% better successful too. So merging the two ratings (Tango’s article and the Speed Score), Young would also be included in Tangos study of Speed players based upon the steals alone. So is Young fast because he has a lot of steals, or is he slow because he didn’t hit any triples? I mean, c’mon, even Jim Thome had two (2) triples in 2010 and Paul Konerko hit one too.

I am not saying this is a flawed formula, however, this doesn’t mean an athletic build from a player who has plus-speed according to scouts will age well. I think Jimmy Rollins is the perfect Cautionary Tale. Just look at his stats (http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=971&position=SS) and Crawfords.

*This is by no means accurate or right, but I’m hesitating to think the justification of Speed or vast totals of Steals solely makes player age well.

In reading about Bruce’s new $51 million, the author reminded me that he’s only 23 years old. He’ll be one of my trickier keeper decisions. He spent last year alternating between stinking up my starting lineup and blowing up on my bench (I guess I need to take some of the blame for that). Any chance he progresses enough to justify a 10-14 dollar price tag next year (the range depends on whether I keep him for 1, 2 or 3 years)?

Also, as a blogger I know you don’t like the Rockies additions of Lopez and Wiggington. But from a standpoint of a team that’s trying to get back to the World Series would you say the additions are solid ones, seeing the fact that EY, Helton, and Stewart were anything but reliable in 2010?

I mean, Lopez and Wigg have to be viewed as upgrades over Barmes, Mora, and Giambi, right?

@big o: Agreed. Apparently, Kemp was at the reception and had an easy shot to catch the garter that fell right in front of him. As expected, he made little effort and lost out on the garter to the ringbearer who outhustled him for it.

I haven’t been on here enough lately due to me trying to dominate football, so I haven’t read through every post…

So apologies in advance if this has been said 8 million times but, when are you going to post your rankings for 2011? I’ve got a draft starting after the first of the year (takes a month or so) so I’d obviously like your infinite wisdom to guide me through. Thanks dood!

@Steve: A couple of threads ago, I read a thread between you and a couple of frequent commenters about getting a separate frequent commenters league going.

I suggest rather than doing that, why don’t you invite them into our “Originals” league, and drop a couple of teams from the bottom who were inactive. I think we’ve got a pretty good top-end already, and if we add two or three active managers, we could have a truly awesome league.

And remember, we are the ORIGINAL commenters league. That stands for something.

If anyone else tends to insomnia, or just lives someplace silly like New Zealand (jk, if anything Im envious), this article is rather interesting for a late nite read. For starters it vindicates the feeling I had last year that Holliday is one of the surest bets in fantasy.

I’ve been plagued with cluster headaches last 4-5 days, barely getting any sleep, its a nightmare so Im kinda punchy….also forgive me anyone if I’ve been crabby. Iif you’ve never heard of cluster headaches…well, I wouldn’t wish these on anyone.

Yeah its been 2 years since I had an episode, just when I think they are never coming back here they are. I will say I’ve had a lot worse series than this one, they are ‘relatively’ mild so far but they still come every few hours, especially at nght, and leave me spent. Thanks for the kind words tho!

@Grey: Well, since you asked…I broke up with the girlfriend and moved back in with my mom and brothers. Taking it ok, trying to stay busy. Work is good and busy, going to apply for a promotion on Tuesday. My fantasy basketball team is barely treading water, too many injuries. Other than that, great! Thanks for asking.

Anyways, back to baseball, I got a hunch Lee stays in Texas now. Something tells me he’s been playing the Yanks all along and much prefers to stay near home, but just wanted to make sure Texas’ offer was comparable.

@Elijah: @Steve: FYI, I live in Texas…Not Dallas, but Houston, and…Yeah, it’s too hot. But that is why AC was invented, no? I’ve got a hunch he stays in Texas as well, hopefully I’m right. I read somewhere that because of the income tax in NY (Texas doesn’t have an income tax) Texas’ offer may be lower, but turn out around the same when you take into account the income tax in NY.